The author, Lisa Plummer writes:

But despite the pervasive number of women who are meeting planners, a June 2012 PCMA study revealed that women’s salaries average 14 percent lower than those of their male counterparts. Women make an average of $69,408 a year. Men come in at $81,161.

“Solid, competitive educational offerings, whether through industry association certificate programs or college- and university-level degree programs, will build more legitimacy for the profession,” says Mason.

Click the graphic to read the entire article.

This is why I started talking about value first. My initial question to the audience was to ask who had $1,000 to give me on the spot. Of course, no one did. But as soon as I started to talk about things that were valuable, a dinner with George Clooney, a brand new Mercedes, a new house, all of a sudden there were a lot of people in the room eager to part with $1,000.

My purpose was to show that monetary figures without the context of value are relatively meaningless. In a sense, this is what I was talking about in last month’s blog post on the GSA. The fact that the government just limited total spend on those types of conferences to a $500k number is nonsensical. There is no context of value, and this is where we, as event managers, need to change the conversation.

I was initially excited when I saw the event industry really focusing on ROI. But now, I’m beginning to feel we’ve only gone halfway in paving the trail towards value. The conversation is predominantly about numbers first: cost per attendee, cost savings year over year, or the shared benefits of travel bundling. While it’s always good to not spend frivolously, it should not take our eyes off the prize.

The entire reason for doing a conference is because of the value it generates for a company. We do not embark on a conference with an end goal of saving money, otherwise the ultimate goal would be to drive closer and closer towards zero, and we all know that’s not the point.  So what is the point?  It’s the value.  If you can have dinner with George Clooney, it might be worth $1,000 (men put in your version here, I apologize for being sexist). If you can get X results at a conference than what is that worth?  What is X worth to the company. That’s the point.  That IS the ROI.

With this framework, we can shift from cost per attendee being associated with a successful conference. It may be a beneficial metric to know as a benchmark, and there is nothing wrong with that. But we all know, a lower cost per attendee could just as easily be associated with an unsuccessful conference as a successful one. It’s not a consistently comparative measure.

Now, there may be some conferences out there whose end goals can be achieved immediately on the spot. Normally those are conferences whose focus is to make a lot of money on attendee fees and sponsorships. There needs to be a net profit, and a large one at that, in order to be successful — and this can be measured immediately. These are events where the conference IS the product.

However, for those conferences or meetings which are not in and of themselves products of the company, but rather marketing vehicles with goals such as loyalty, prospect conversation, education, etc, on-site metrics rarely make much sense. The end return on these goals is rarely captured on-site. It’s a bit like putting up a billboard on Sunset Boulevard and expecting it to pay for itself on the day it goes up. No one would hold a marketing campaign to that standard, and no one should hold an event to it either. The value is reached over a certain time horizon.

A perfect example of this was brought up by one of the attendees in the session. She was getting pressure from the top about the cost per attendee price having gone up at a recent meeting.  But she was trying to point out to management that the two prospects who she recommended inviting both converted to customers following the conference. Those two prospects are worth over a million dollars a year to the company. A half million dollar conference then, has returned double that in revenue in the first year, nevermind what will be brought in over the lifetime of those customers.

The other terms being used currently to talk about event value, ROE (return on event) and ROO (return on objective) seem to both get to value at an end result. Ultimately we are answering the questions – “Why are we doing what we’re doing?,”  ”Why are we hosting a conference or a meeting?,” and  ”How long will it take to see the results of what we’re creating?” So let’s get to the question of value first, before we talk about any of the Rs at all.

Executives have always understood marketing to have a time horizon for return, and it is time they see events the same way. Our value is being undersold otherwise.

Original post can be found here: http://www.successfulmeetings.com/blog.aspx?id=14762&blogid=250

The GSA Effect (aka AIG Effect)

As we all know by now, the GSA incident has caused another ripple effect throughout our industry. Congress has even passed legislation that restricts the amount of money an agency can pay for a conference ($500k) and would also make plenty about the conference public online, for up to five years. (See MPI for the copy.)

Clearly transparency and fiscal responsibility are the words of the day.

However, shouldn’t that be a good thing? On the MPI site event professionals are encouraged to write their representatives in response to the legislation, but I don’t think the suggested response is strong enough. It sounds more like, ‘this will hurt the industry’, rather than, ‘this is how the industry can provide an answer.’

I have a phrase in our company, “Run towards the pain.” And to me, if there was a time to be bold, and address the issue of events being perceived as a boondoggle, the time is now. The AIG effect came and went without respect for the industry increasing, but here is another chance.

What we should be saying to Congress and indeed anyone else, is that there should be a standard success metric and goal document produced for a taxpayer-produced conference or any conference. Why not? There should be no fear in that. There should be goal standards in our industry so that anyone can see these are business exercises. Now, whether the goals are ‘worthy’ enough will be up for debate. But they should never be hidden, and indeed they should be expected.

Picture what it would look like if that were the case. Congress would casino real money have asked for the expected “business metrics” document and they would have seen benefit matched with spend, and expectations of long term results. While there may likely have been an inquiry, it would have looked a lot better for the industry if these questions were immediately met with standard metrics.

Here is what I recommend. As an industry, we should be committed to standardizing goals and metrics for online casino in australia events across the board. The GSA event should provoke a strong desire to show that the industry is not afraid of inquiry. We are not afraid of showing that events are done to get a business result. We take it as a welcome throwing of the gauntlet.

Government or taxpayer-funded events should be first in line to receive these standardized metrics. This could be done with help of those in the fields. The discussion could start by asking how they could be structured to avoid a GSA moment again? The letter to Congress could say that the industry has taken this as a call to arms, one that will result in a standard to be proud of.

Did the GSA event go too far? I’m going to guess yes. But I don’t know, and that’s the problem. I can’t go to any metrics and look for myself. There could easily be $800k worth of reasons. As we know in the industry, that’s actually not a high sum given dinners, hotel costs, etc. Given the actions of the contractor finding the location, some of those might be suspect, but some of them might also be industry practice. If so, we should be defending it or at least bringing it into the open.

I believe that if we see this controversy as an opportunity, we could see GSA and AIG scandals have less impact to the event industry reputation at large. And this could only mean more meetings, more conferences. CEOs would know that they could confidently defend any decision to host an event, and the amount paid. We do not want Congress creating our standards for us, but that means it’s time to set our own.

Posted by kate at 5/7/2012 12:45 PM

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